Pippa Middleton has attended the film premiere of a new IRA thriller after
largely staying out of the public eye during the London 2012 Olympics.

The Duchess of Cambridge's younger sister hit the red carpet for the British premiere of Shadow Dancer at London's Cineworld Haymarket last night.

Joining the movie’s star Clive Owen, 47, and other guests including former Bond girl Rosamund Pike, 33, it was one of her first public appearances in several weeks.

She wore a fitted black dress with a lacy upper section covering her shoulders, with a pair of towering strappy sandals and a black clutch bag with silver piping detail. She attended the premiere alone.

It comes just a few weeks after fashion designer Karl Lagerfeld, 78, said Miss Middleton should “only show her back” as she “struggles” with her looks.

Shadow Dancer, which had its world premiere at the Berlin Film Festival earlier this year, tells the story of a member of the IRA who helps MI5 in order to protect his family in Belfast in the 1990s.

The thriller, co-starring Gillian Anderson and Andrea Riseborough and directed by Man On Wire's James Marsh, is adapted from Tom Bradby's novel of the same name.

Bradby, ITV’s Political Editor, has said it was inspired by his time as a journalist in Northern Ireland in the 1990s.

Owen, who plays an MI5 agent sent to persuade Riseborough's character to spy on her IRA brothers for British intelligence, disclosed his strong memories of Belfast as being a like a "war zone" during the Troubles.

The Sin City star appeared on stage in Belfast during that time.

"It was the first time I'd been there and it was during the Troubles and I remember it very strongly,” he said.

"The place was virtually a war zone. There were soldier drills going on all over the place and it had a tension about it."

But writer Bradby, who adapted the screenplay himself, said he purposefully had not made a political film, simply an espionage drama.

For some of the 1990s, he was ITN’s man in Northern Ireland, reporting on the UK’s own attritional war on terror before becoming royal correspondent after being shot in the leg in Jakarta.